Ring airfoils have a variety of desireable characteristics. Properly launched, these toy projectiles combine the characteristics of a glider with those of a ballistic object. They fly a straight, predictable path, but make use of air to glide as well. The result is a projectile with an anomalously long range, typically three times as long as a purely ballistic object having the same mass, energy, and drag. As a result, various ring airfoil toys have been developed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,970,970 discloses a launcher mechanism for small ring airfoils (RAFs) made of elastomer or foam. These toys allowed players to launch RAFs far beyond the range of foam darts, balls, or equivalent ballistic toy projectiles. The first time one sees this projectile in flight, a sense of wonderment ensues at how it appears to defy normal ballistic expectations and fly so much farther.
A significant drawback to existing ring airfoil launching toys, such as that disclosed in the '970 Patent, is that they are generally configured to only launch a single ring airfoil between each manual loading. For example, the launcher detailed in the '970 Patent is a “muzzle-loader,” meaning that the user is required to hand load each projectile at the muzzle, then cock and fire the launcher. While this is acceptable for “sniping” in children's war games, it means that when attacked, the child armed with this toy will not have the ability to deliver follow-on shots as is common with the multiple-barrel foam dart launchers on the market.
Some attempts have been made to develop launchers configured to launch multiple ring airfoils. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,152,123 and 6,076,511 detail two different solutions. The former device defines two independent launching mechanisms, which adds cost to the toy as well as creating a toy which is heavier and larger and has an ungainly appearance. The latter device was a launcher with a magazine. However, this device required the launch engine to be fully retracted into the frame as a unit, then pushed forward to allow indexing of the magazine, then followed by the push-through of the mechanism's member to seat a fresh RAF and cock the launcher. This repeating mechanism was costly and prone to difficult jams because of an inherent flaw in the working concept—RAFs had to be inserted into the revolving magazine from the front so they could be picked up and pushed forward by the moving launch engine. This meant that the RAFs could be held in the magazine only by friction until properly seated in the engine chuck. Yet a snug fit was also required on the chuck to keep the RAF from falling off. This required a difficult accounting of frictional forces, in which the increasing friction between the inner surface of the RAF and the chuck of the engine must be kept below the static friction holding the RAF in the magazine until the RAF has been fully seated in the chuck. Thus as the chuck of the engine moved forward to strip a RAF from the magazine, it could be prematurely pushed forward and cock sideways in the mechanism. This would cause jams nearly impossible to clear.
The need thus exists for a better ring airfoil launcher, and particularly such a launcher with a semi-automatic loading mode.